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Lady Gaga can count on the intense loyalty of her fans to drive online buzz, but what about less glamorous brands? It's still possible to cultivate intense loyalty and customer engagement, if you're creative and committed to doing so, writes Lindsey Plocek. Giving fans a reason to talk back to you -- or clearly asking them to go out and spread the word -- can go a long way, Plocek writes.

Social media moved into the mainstream this year, and in 2014 will continue to build on that momentum, top marketers say. Among their predictions: Facebook and Google+ are likely to thrive; consumers are likely to get more comfortable sharing information and spending money via social channels; and brands will find more creative ways to interact with customers. "Next year will be the year that retailers go bananas over user-generated content," Curalate CEO Apu Gupta said.

Brands should stop trying to engage with consumers as if they were people, writes Corey Mull. Less than a quarter of respondents to a recent survey engage brands online -- and they tend to already have an affinity for the brand, he writes. Brands should concentrate instead on making the consumer's life simpler, creating metrics based on customer "health," and on hiring people who can manage a brand over the long haul.

Brands increasingly use a Facebook logo in their print and broadcast ads, but it's not always easy for consumers to track down a brand's presence on the site, says 360i's David Berkowitz. Official brand pages don't always pop up when users search the site, and search results often are clogged with unofficial fan-made pages. "I'd say Facebook search is broken, but it was never working right to begin with," Berkowitz says.

New polling data suggests anger at U.S. foreign policy may be translating into avoidance of U.S. brands in some countries. "The world's love affair with America isn't exactly over, but it has stopped being a blind and unquestioning kind of love," said Simon Anholt, author of "Brand America." Business for Diplomatic Action, a coalition of public relations and advertising executives, has recruited companies such as PepsiCo and McDonald's to join an effort to help improve America's image abroad.